Monthly Archives: July 2014

After years of research, and by years I mean five minutes of glancing at a few soccer related blogs, I have finally figured out why Africa will never win the soccer world cup.

You can never be good at everything. If there’s one thing that soccer pundits around the world will agree on it’s the fact that no one does sports celebrations quite like the African teams. Of course that’s if we’re not counting the American Major League Baseball mascots. Think Roger Milla and his wiggling waist, Nigeria’s Julius Aghahowa’s back flips or Rashidi Yekini’s arms through the net. All this comes at a price. Since we are so exceptional at celebrations we’ve had to sacrifice actually winning when it matters on the world stage.

As much as we all seem to get infected with varying levels of African patriotism during World Cups very few of us actually believe in our hearts that the African teams can win the World Cup. I sometimes dislike the way we are quick to judge people who openly say this when we actually believe the same.

Since it’s inception (in 1930) no African team has ever won the soccer World Cup so it boggles me to no end that we turn it into an issue every time we don’t do well at this tournament. There is a lot that is wrong in African football from administration, payment issues, Taribo West’s green and white braids (good thing he retired) to Asamoah Gyan wearing the no.3 shirt when he is a striker. Winning the World Cup would go a small way in fixing that but by no means would it mean an end to our footballing woes.

And to qoute another blogger who rightly corrected me “World Cup soccer is for nations, not for continents. So indeed, Africa will never win it. Nor Europe by the way.”

So with that said as Africans let’s stop the bickering and do what we’ve always done every World Cup since Pele… keep calm and support Brazil!